Letter: It’s Tax Time in Hamden Again and Surprise! The Taxpayer Loses Again

To the Editor:

The budget process was painful and resulted in a nasty 4.9 percent tax increase.

There were lots of increases: pension funding, health care and police/fire.

Worst of all, the Board of Education got a huge increase, despite a $3.8 Million cut in state funding and ongoing mediocre school performance. The only “sacrifice” the Board of Education made is that eight retiring teachers are not being replaced. This is really minimal, considering that Hamden has 580 teachers & administrators and only 6000 students, a remarkably high ratio.

Mayor Jackson proposed a generous $800,000 budget increase for the schools.

The Town Council shamefully voted to double down, adding $300,000 more in cash plus $500,000 in capitalized software. Then the news came about the cut in state funding. Instead of reducing the appropriation, the Board gave back on the revenue side, ceding $1.3 Million in excess special education money to the town. The other $2.5 Million is coming straight from the taxpayers. The schools are getting $4.1 Million more from the town’s tax revenues than last year, alone adding roughly one full mill to the rate!

Special education funding has been a kind of slush fund for the Board of Education. They use that excess money to cover all kinds of other expenses, freeing their main budget to fund their number one priority, ever-higher salaries. The state reports that Hamden spends over $10,000 per student on teachers, 25 percent higher than the state average. What ever happened to the idea of paying for performance?

Hamden’s inflated school budget is now $81.4 Million, not counting over $20 million spent on health care and worker’s compensation provided by the town. Including those benefits, total school spending is now over $17,000 per student. Thanks to our outrageous state statute, the budget can never be reduced below that level even if enrollment drops. Hamden taxpayers are permanently locked into this extraordinarily high funding level or even more.

The politicians just won’t slow down spending increases!

Last year Hamden’s mill rate was the highest in the state except for four of the large cities and East Hartford. This year it increased another 1.8 mills to 38.94.

Click the link below to see just how badly our taxes compare to other towns:

http://ct.gov/opm/cwp/view.asp?A=2987&Q=385976

George Levinson